Who is Jesus?
His is a challenging introduction. The records of his life are fragments. The world equates him with religion and his mystery has grown to myth. But suppose your questions could be answered. The Urantia Book reveals, in hundreds of pages, details of the life of Jesus and his teachings.
Human and Divine
From his conception, Jesus was a human being. He was also a divine son of God sharing and experiencing the life of Jesus. His life is the image of what we can make of our lives by choosing to live as he lived. His way of living was to internally discern how goodness, mercy, and love would behave and then to carry that into the physical world by doing everything with loving, gentle, and serving action.
The Urantia Book Restores Historical Facts
Jesus’ life before he began his public ministry in his late twenties is scarcely recounted in Christian scripture. The Urantia Book covers it in great detail and makes clear that Jesus was not simply God in the shape of a human but that he was fully human as well. He experienced the joy and emotions of human relationships, achievement, and disappointment. The Urantia Book provides explanations by celestial authorities of what Jesus was thinking, experiencing, and meaning by what he said and did.
Birth and Fleeing Herod
Jesus was born at noon August 21, 7 BCE in a grain storage room of a caravan stable below an inn in the city of Bethlehem near Jerusalem. His parents named him Joshua as the angel Gabriel had previously directed Mary to name him. Jesus spent his first year in and near Bethlehem.
His family fled Bethlehem to avoid King Herod’s effort to find Jesus and kill him. His second and third years were spent in Alexandria in Egypt where he and his family lived with well-to-do relatives of Joseph. During Jesus’ third year, King Herod died, and Jesus’ family returned to Bethlehem and then to Nazareth to the one-room stone structure which would be his home until his early twenties.
Jesus’ Family
Mary and Joseph had seven younger children as well. After Joseph’s death in a construction accident when Jesus was fourteen, Jesus served as the father to his four brothers and three sisters. The family remained loving and close but slowly drifted into poverty.
Opportunity for a Loving Mate
During his late teens, Rebecca, the eldest daughter of a wealthy merchant and trader of Nazareth, pressed her father to invite Jesus to wed her. Her father even offered to supply the family with sufficient income fully to compensate for the loss of Jesus’ earnings. Jesus very graciously declined. Nevertheless, she continued to love him. Neither of them ever married. She followed his career and was present as he was crucified and died in Jerusalem.
Building Boats at Capernaum
In his late twenties, Jesus spent a year living in Capernaum with the Zebedee family. He spent his time there as Zebedee’s partner, designing and building boats at Zebedee’s shop at Capernaum near the north end of the Sea of Galilee. Zebedee’s sons, James and John, would become two of his twelve apostles, while a third son, David, would organize Jesus’ teaching camps and create and operate Jesus’ extensive messenger service.
Traveling the Roman Empire
Afterward, Jesus spent almost two years traveling with a wealthy Indian merchant and his son who were touring the Roman empire. Jesus acted as interpreter for the father and son. He also acted as the son’s tutor. During these years, the travelers visited various cities in present-day Israel, Egypt, Greece, Tunisia, Libya, Malta, Italy, and Turkey. Jesus later spent a year as the conductor of a caravan.
Everywhere he went, he spent much of his free time visiting extensively with all sorts of people about their lives and their significant concerns. He was truly and deeply interested in people and made friends of many of those he met.
Artist, Craftsman, Student, and Scholar
Jesus was a harp musician, a potter, a carpenter, a leather worker, a student of mathematics, and a scholar of Hebrew scripture. He was fluent in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He enjoyed drawing and watching athletic competition, even though these were forbidden activities for religious Jews like him.
Socially Popular
He was popular with young men and women of Nazareth until he refused to participate in either of two rival political organizations in Nazareth. As an adult he was imposing and handsome. He was charming, gentle, highly persuasive and authoritative. He was charismatic and immediately impressive. He had a sense of humor and was not overly serious. His associates enjoyed his company and loved him.
Humble Human and Masterful Deity
Only a few months before his baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus became aware that he was both Joshua ben Joseph of Nazareth and the all-powerful creator of this universe of ten million inhabited planets. And yet there was never a hint of superiority or privilege expressed by him. As the universe’s creator he was here on a dual mission to understand humanity from inside the experience of being human and to portray God to humanity. He treated everyone as beloved family members. Even those who rejected him.
Jesus’ entire life expressed his close personal relationship with his heavenly father, the divine source of all unselfish love.
